Civil Rights

(818 votes)   There’s no reason that the government should prevent homosexuals from entering civil marriages because some religions object to the concept, any more than the government should ban atheism because some religions object to it.

Lisa Pampuch
newspaper columnist

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(404 votes)   Marriage is both a civil and because some religions object to the concept, any more than the government should ban atheism because some religions object to it.

Lisa Pampuch
newspaper columnist

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(353 votes)   How can I be expected to believe that this same racial discrimination which has been the cause of so much injustice and suffering right through the years, should now operate here to give me a fair and open trial?....consider myself neither morally nor legally obliged to obey laws made by a Parliament in which I am not represented. That the will of the people is the basis of the authority of government, is a principle universally acknowledged as sacred throughout the civilized world.

Nelson Mandela
South African Statesman - b 1918 - Nobel Prize Winner 1993

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(217 votes)   Words like ''freedom,'' ''justice,'' ''democracy'' are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply.

James Baldwin
1924-1987, American Author

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(204 votes)   I know up on the top you are seeing great sights, but down at the bottom we, too, should have rights.

Dr. Seuss
American Writer and Cartoonist, b. 1904-1991

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(189 votes)   In the old times men carried out their rights for themselves as they lived, but nowadays every baby seems born with a social manifesto in its mouth much bigger than itself.

Oscar Wilde
1856-1900, British Author, Wit

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(127 votes)   touch one gray hair

stonewall jackson

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(104 votes)   Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves.

Edmund Burke
1729-1797, British Political Writer, Statesman

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(101 votes)   A state that denies its citizens their basic rights becomes a danger to its neighbors as well: internal arbitrary rule will be reflected in arbitrary external relations. The suppression of public opinion, the abolition of public competition for power and its public exercise opens the way for the state power to arm itself in any way it sees fit. A state that does not hesitate to lie to its own people will not hesitate to lie to other states.

Vaclav Havel
1936-, Czech Playwright, President

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(99 votes)   Anglo-Saxon civilization has taught the individual to protect his own rights; American civilization will teach him to respect the rights of others.

William Jennings Bryan
1860-1925, American Lawyer, Politician

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(91 votes)   Ignorance, forgetfulness, or contempt of the rights of man are the only causes of public misfortunes and of the corruption of governments.

French National Assembly

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(89 votes)   To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled -- because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.

Friedrich Nietzsche
1844-1900, German Philosopher

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(85 votes)   Civil Rights: What black folks are given in the U.S. on the installment plan, as in civil-rights bills. Not to be confused with human rights, which are the dignity, stature, humanity, respect, and freedom belonging to all people by right of their birth.

Dick Gregory
American Comedian

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website